Nick Harte of Shocking Pinks crafts inconsolable, dejected no-fi electro-pop that stresses the isolation of being a “bedroom artist” rather than the intimacy. His isn’t the sound of heartbreak or losing a job; Shocking Pinks are the sound of being awake at 2 a.m., clicking through Monster.com and OkCupid profiles, wondering if both pursuits are utterly hopeless and if you're going to sleep in until noon again tomorrow. So when a guy like this takes seven years between albums, you have every reason to be worried. Harte’s hometown of Christchurch, New Zealand, was decimated by an earthquake in 2011 and his ex-girlfriend appears on several new songs here. So Guilt Mirrors can be heard as the sound of Harte's world falling apart literally and figuratively and it takes 160 minutes on this 3xLP to assess the damage. You can’t say he didn’t warn you.
The main sticking point of Shocking Pinks’ fine 2007 self-titled album was that it could’ve used an editor; it was 17 songs and “only” 45 minutes. But real depression is an all-consuming, crippling thing and if you’re gonna go there with Shocking Pinks, why not go all the way? Within the first 10 of Guilt Mirrors’ 35 songs, the Debased God has already explored every gray, black, and light-black of the feel-bad rainbow. Lead single “Not Gambling” isn’t as melodically impressive as the best songs on Shocking Pinks, though its found sound clutter leads you to believe Guilt Mirrors will make good on its anything-goes format; the narrator’s not gambling because that requires some modicum of hope or faith, and the song eventually collapses into a cacophony of fumbled coins and losing slot machines. Even if chillwave came and went dead in the middle of Harte’s time off, downer dance tracks like "GUN NEST" and “Double Vision Version” show him as something of a precursor and a torchbearer. The most welcome surprise comes on “What’s Up With That Girl”, where he hands the mic over to Ashlin Frances Raymond for old school post-IDM pop reminiscent of the Notwist or Dntel.
As the only guy ever signed to both Flying Nun and DFA, Harte's best work found a synthesis between those incongruous labels. But the appeal of a triple-LP is hearing an artist either at the top of his game or unafraid to try anything and fail. Guilt Mirrors is towering ambition that's mostly vaguely expressed and executed halfway. You never listened to Shocking Pinks for the production values, and that should hardly be an issue here. Guilt Mirrors is even murkier and more muted than its predecessors, the low-end punch of Shocking Pinks giving way to anemic drum machines and blobbed bass, while the vocal recording has Harte’s melodies often sounding like they’re being wadded up and discarded rather than sang. His stylistic range is admirable, but the timbral range likens the experience to a wine tasting with sinus congestion; you get the buzzy haze, but no sense of nuance or body, so a wafting piano ballad (“Motel”) ends up having the same effect as the two-minute noise piece “Glass Slippers.”
So there’s a solid 45-minute follow-up to Shocking Pinks somewhere in here, albeit one that’s not exactly revelatory considering the gestation period. But as generous as Guilt Mirrors might seem, it puts an oppressive onus on the listener to find it. It isn’t a treasure hunt so much as a housecleaning. Here’s a hint: if a song’s longer than five minutes, there’s a good chance it’s not going to earn a second listen. Collect the six longest tracks and that alone is about an hour’s worth of perfunctorily “experimental” music that’s immediately skippable.
Contrary to what the format of Guilt Mirrors implies, Harte does have some kind of editorial impulse; in the seven years since Shocking Pinks (which was basically a rerelease of two previously available records), he claims to have recorded nearly seven or eight albums worth of material. Meaning that he believes the formless noise of “LV VS SX”, “Get in There Bitch” and “SoapsuddS” are every bit the equal of “St. Louis”, “Not Gambling", or the other concise, dog-eared songs that show where his strengths lie. You wonder if even Harte himself can manage to get through this thing in one sitting; the existence of a 12” single-LP version tips his hand. Why didn’t he just do that in the first place? Misery loves company, but Guilt Mirrors is designed to drive it away.
